BWW Reviews: CARNABY STREET, Hackney Empire, April 10 2013

It's just no good decrying a show like Carnaby Street for not being Show Boat - that would be too easy and, more importantly, unfair. It's a jukebox musical that uses a wafer- thin plot peopled by cookie-cutter characters to house hit after hit after hit from the groovy Sixties. What producer/writer Carl Leighton-Pope lacks in dramatic imagination, he certainly makes up for in rights clearances. There's an avalanche of pop favourites from start to finish that makes the Now That's What I Call Music franchise seem reticent.

Scouser Jude has surfed the wave of Merseybeat all the way to London's hippest hangout, Carnaby Street, to try his luck as a solo Beatle - a sexier Cliff Richard if you will - and soon lucks out with posh totty Jane and music impresario Arnold Layne. Meanwhile his old schoolfriend Penny Lane (Jude should have been called Denny really) doesn't care for Jude's now rampaging ego and has hooked up with hairy rocker Wild Thing, whom Jude has left behind in London to go break America. Beavering in the background, road manager Jack is getting the gigs and dressing the band with the assistance of camp designer Lilly the Pink. Paper-seller Al has a walk-on part (and, boy, does he walk on and walk on and walk on) announcing headlines from the Sixties to show how different (or not) we were back then. Some things turn out for the best and some (because drugs are bad, kids) don't.

Though Verity Rushworth sings well as Penny and Aaron Sidwell channels Tommy Steele as a jack-the-laddish Jack, the need to wedge so many songs into the show prevents the actors developing their characters. Matthew Wycliffe (Jude) and Tricia Adele-Turner (Jane) go from a Jude infatuation with Jane to a Jane infatuation with Jude without anything in between and Hugo Harold-Harrison as Arnold can't decide whether to be a goodie or a baddie. We root for things to turn out well for homely Penny, but we don't learn enough about the other characters to like them sufficiently to care about their fates. But, just when such dramatic tension is being contemplated, someone pipes up with "Twist and Shout" and we move on.

If the sets are a little lacklustre, the costumes (by Brigid Guy) are pitch perfect - penny-round collars and polyester shirts with the occasional velvet jacket for the boys and Bridget Riley monochrome prints and ultra-short mini skirts for the girls. There are a few clever references to the likes of Jean Shrimpton and Vidal Sassoon too, but also some clunking puns that add nothing to the plot and not much to the comedy. The show is long at about two and a half hours too - it's all those songs!

If you want to hear the likes of "Anyone Who Had A Heart" or "Go Now" or "Money (That's What I Want)" performed live by good singers with a fine band (though I'm slightly suspicious about some instruments and backing vocals clearly heard but not seen), then you'll enjoy the show. You'll especially an extraordinarily accurate impersonation of a Sixties icon (that I shan't spoil by telling) and a big singalong finale.

Carnaby Street continues at the Hackney Empire until 14 April and is on tour.

Photo Credit: Genevieve Rafter-Keddy

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